1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to antennas and, more specifically, to origami folded antennas.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been a large amount of work by mathematicians and engineers over the past two decades focusing on the mathematical foundations of origami and more generally folding and unfolding systems. The property of an object being able to unfold is often referred to as deployability, which can serve different purposes for various applications. For example, deployable antennas and solar panels are highly desirable in satellite and other space applications. In such applications, it is important for an antenna or solar panel to be able to fit into a small space, but also be expandable to a fully operational size once orbit has been achieved.
The issue of deployability of antennas is especially critical as the size of satellites gets smaller. While the sensors and operating electronics of miniaturized satellites can be scaled to extremely small volumes, the wavelengths of the signals used by such miniaturized satellites to communicate do no scale accordingly. Given that the wavelength of a signal determines the size of an antenna used to communicate that signal, antennas for miniaturized satellites must still have dimensions similar to those of larger satellites. Some of the advantage of satellite miniaturization is lost as a result of poorly deployable antennas.
Therefore, there is a need for highly deployable antennas that occupy small volumes prior to deployment.